Although the McKenzie novel was clearly inspired by the Portis novel (1979), the only clear allusion to the earlier work comes early when Penny Rush, our narrator, asks why a beat-up old van is called the Dog of the North. She's told it was named "in honor of a beloved novel with a similar name." And, yes, the Dog of the South is also the name of a vehicle, an old bus.
The newer novel is by no means a sequel, and the characters are entirely different, yet it has a spirit similar to that of the Portis novel. It is also a hero-takes-a-crazy-journey kind of story, this time with a female hero.
Penny has family troubles. She has left her husband. Her mother and stepfather disappeared in the Australian outback five years before. She goes to Santa Barbara to try to help her grandparents, who divorced years ago, to sort out their problems. Her grandfather has been given the boot by his current wife, while her grandmother, Pincer, a retired physician, has gone loopy, lives in clutter and filth and is found to have a man's skeleton on her property.
Penny takes a shine to Burt, a man who owns that van and who has been trying to help Pincer. He develops serious health problems, which brings his brother Dale to his side. And then Penny takes a shine to him.
The scene shifts to Texas, and then she and her grandfather decide to fly to Australia to make one last attempt to discover what happened to her mother and stepfather.
And it all ends in Carlsbad Caverns.
Many novelists have attempted to tell wacky travel adventures of this sort, but few have succeeded as well as Charles Portis. And now Elizabeth McKenzie.
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